Welcome to the 15th edition of NUS Arts Festival (NAF); NUS’ highly anticipated flagship arts event on campus. As with past NAFs, we showcase the best of students’ performances in creative partnership with diversely talented local and international artists, conceived with strong support from the academic fraternity.
Ways of Seeing is the theme for 2020’s NUS Arts Festival and invites us to consider how we “see” the world around us and why we “see” in the way we do. It draws our attention to how our worlds are perceived through different lenses; physical, psychological and cultural. It is my hope that through this Festival, we re-examine how we can “see” more clearly.
From unpacking the layered meanings in a painting to a deeper understanding of the relationship between the viewer and the object of their sight, to the impact of new media and technologies on the proliferation and perception of what we see, this Festival has stretched our students’ abilities to take on a broad range of compelling issues in partnership with our academic partners and represent them through their chosen art forms.
The Festival opens with Mindscapes, a visually stunning yet introspective performance from NUS Chinese Dance. Drawing inspiration from artworks in the NUS Museum’s Lee Kong Chian Collection and South and Southeast Asian Collection, Artistic Director Ding Hong and guest choreographer Wang Cheng invite us to rethink our universal values and ideals through diverse Chinese dance styles in this presentation.
As a fitting close to their 40th anniversary celebrations and the NUS Arts Festival, NUS Symphony Orchestra invites you to A Night At The Gallery, where through the imagination, you will see the pictures in the music. In Foxconn Frequency (no. 3) - for three visibly Chinese performers (by Hong Kong Exile) and A Grand Design, A Work-In-Progress (by Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips), cold technology and economic progress are questioned over self-preservation and heritage. Societal and cultural expectations are at the heart of the performance Rantau: Layaran Sukma (Explorations: Voyage of the Soul) by NUS Malay Dance Group, NUS Ilsa Tari, while Blindspot by NUS Chinese Drama explores perceptions and challenges of the visually impaired.
Perhaps what expresses the essence of the Festival’s theme is Jo Bannon’s Exposure where in an intimate setting of one actor and one audience, we see how differing conclusions can be made, depending on what we choose to look at.
As always, the NUS Arts Festival will not be possible without the hard work of our students who have tirelessly dedicated themselves to their creative pursuit and the commitment of our tutors who have continually challenged them. To our academic partners from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Departments of Malay Studies, Japanese Studies, Communications and New Media, and Geography), School of Design and Environment (Department of Architecture), thank you for your invaluable inputs that have allowed the Festival to stay true to our research-based focus. Finally, our deepest thanks goes to the donors for your generous and unwavering support.
We warmly welcome you to NUS Arts Festival 2020: Ways of Seeing and invite you to embrace new perspectives.
In the year 2020, the theme ‘Ways of Seeing’ for the NUS Arts Festival is indeed a fitting one. While conventional wisdom dictates that 20/20 is normal vision, in the year 2020 NUS Centre For the Arts (CFA) asks that we take a moment to critically engage with what this means. How do things become normal?
The theme for this year’s festival also borrows from John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ where he advocates for a more relational understanding of art that focuses on the connection between the object and the viewer. But what is this connection between the object and the viewer? Does it refer to what we can see in front of us literally? For Berger, it also refers to the hidden message that we must decipher by looking beyond the art work.
Social and cultural geographers have continued to be intrigued by this concept of ‘ways of seeing’. What we see in front of us, is influenced not only by the materiality that lies in front of us but is also influenced by our perspective. This refers not only to our physical location as the observer, but also our positionality or social context. The same scene before us can be ‘seen’ or read and further represented in a multitude of ways (e.g. maps, paintings, and photographs).
Indeed when people gather together and look in the same direction at the same point in time, they may see similar and different elements before them. They may describe landscape before them in terms of nature (hills, rivers, trees), human objects and intervention (houses, buildings, farms), or in terms of colour, dimension, and measurement. These are facts that take on meaning as the observer makes sense of the visual world.
In other words, what we see is “composed not only of what lies before our eyes but what lies in our heads” (Meinig, 1979: 1). It is this process of seeing, reading, and representing that cultural geographers associate with the politics and power of space.
As a social and cultural geographer, this year’s theme is especially meaningful to me. When I was asked to be CFA’s faculty advisor, I jumped at the chance to once again engage and explore my two passions in life – the arts and geography.
The programme for 2020 is particularly exciting, and the audience is invited to see the world through dance, music, augmented reality, art, critical conversation and so much more. How will these artists and performers entreat us to see the world? What are the similarities and differences? How will our perspectives be influenced?
It is this spirit of openness and willingness to engage across disciplinary boundaries that the academics involved in this year’s festival and the team at CFA embrace. And it has indeed been a pleasure and honour to work with colleagues who value this approach to learning. I hope you enjoy the programme we have curated and that you continue to uncover new ways of seeing through the arts.
The NUS Arts Festival is a unique annual arts event that is only made possible with the support of donors, faculty, alumni and our student performers.
Special Thanks to:
Donors
Supported by
Performance supporters
The NUS Arts Festival has been enriching the university experience for 15 years now. It is a unique platform where over 1,000 NUS students collaborate with academic faculty and professional artistes to create and present new works each year to more than 10,000 audiences.
Participating in the NUS Arts Festival has invigorated, challenged and inspired all involved - from the performers to the audience. Each student performer comes away with a sense of achievement and pride while the audiences, from the public to friends and family, have been touched by the talent and dedication from the students.
The NUS Arts Festival offers students who have a passion for the arts creative expression and reaches out to many more students who may not have yet seen a performance.
If you share the same belief, please give us your support.
Every gift is valuable. Singapore tax residents are eligible for a tax deduction that is 2.5 times the gift value for gifts made in 2020. To find out more, please contact Kerry Tan at kerry@nus.edu.sg or call +65 6516 5278.
We look forward to welcoming you to many more NUS Arts Festivals to come.
Thank you
